Tuesday, October 25, 2016

How to Rent a Farm

From Houghtaling's Handbook of Useful Information ©1887

In the rental of property, the greater risk is always on the landlord's side. He is putting his property into the possession and care of another, and that other is not unfrequently a person of doubtful utility. These rules and cautions may well be observed.

1. Trust to no verbal lease. Let it be in writing, signed and sealed. Its stipulations then become commands and can be enforced. Let it be signed in duplicate, so that each party may have an original.

2. Insert such covenants as to repairs, manner of use and in restraint of waste as the circumstances call for. As to particular stipulations, examin leases drawn by those who have had long experience in renting farms, and adopt such as meet your case.

3. There should be covenants asainst assigning and underletting.

4. If the tenant is of doubtful responsibility, make the rent payable in installments. A covenant that the crops shall remain the lessor's till the lessee's contracts with him have been fulfilled, is valid against the lessee's creditors. In the ordinary case of renting farms on shares, the courts will treat the crops as the joint property of lord and tenant, and thus protect the former's rights.

5. Every lease should contain stipulations for forfeiture and re-entry in case of non-payment of breach of any covenants.

6. To prevent a tenant's committing waste, the courts will grant an injunction.

7. Above all be careful in selecting your tenant. There is more in the man than there is in the bond.

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